Netwizard Terrain Customisation
Index
Overview
Respax NetWizard is a web based, step-by-step booking wizard for the web. It allows your agents and the general public alike to book your tours directly on your website. The NetWizard supports real time availability, real time credit card authentication and returns instant confirmation numbers. All bookings are added directly to the live Respax database and availability is changed immediately.
NetWizard fits inside your existing website and can be completely customised to suit your existing colour theme. NetWizard connects directly to the ResPax reservations database.
The appearance of the Netwizard is controlled from a single stylesheet file called netwizard.css. Netwizard also uses a flexible Terrain Directory Structure to facilitate a wide range of website implementation options. The Terrain also allows appearance customisation for multiple websites and multiple financial entities. For Example: Bogus Brothers Tours and Alice Cooper Snake Tours are in the same ResPax database and are run by the same company but they can have an individual look and feel to them... and be intergrated to separate websites.
The Netwizard is broken into a number of sections to allow direct access for Agents, External Operators, Internal Operators, Passengers and information pages. Access to each section is through specific links that can be added to html pages or inside html frames.
Sections and How to Access Them
The following sections are available through the ResPax Netwizard. The screen shots are using the Oz Experience terrain theming and shows a typical example of how the same site can be diversly customised for each section including different logos, images and colours. The links assume that you have installed the Respax Netwizard on www.yourserver.com.
AGENT SECTION - Direct login access for Travel Agents. It has a simple homepage with editing facilities for agent organisation details, preferences, users and the agents bookings. The agent can setup their favourite tours and book them directly from the homepage. All commission structures and other agent specific setups are recognised in the Agent Section.
The following link is typical to connect to the above page. Replace OZEX with the name of your SITE.
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/agent/agentlogin.php?SITE=OZEX
OPERATOR SECTION - Direct login access for Operators. It is typically used for regional offices and external operators. It is designed to have slightly more functionality than the Agent Section. It includes tour manifest and pickup manifests as well as a interface to book and edit existing bookings regardless of which agent has booked it. Booking facility can be restricted to specific operators.
The following link is typical to connect to the above page. Replace OZEX with the name of your SITE.
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/roo/roologin.php?SITE=OZEX
PASSENGER SECTION - Direct login access for Passengers. Limited interface which allows the Passenger to access the bookings they have made and modify them. They can also add new bookings. As a passenger does not have an established line of credit, they will be forced to enter in their credit card details.
The following link is typical to connect to the above page. Replace OZEX with the name of your SITE.
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/pax/paxlogin.php?SITE=OZEX
INFO SECTION - All tours in Respax can be web categorised, web grouped and can have additional information added to give as much information as possible to the browser. The info section can be accessed through infoGroups, infoCategories and infoDetails.
The following links is typical to connect to the info page. Replace OZEX with the name of your SITE. Replace tourcodes, category ids and group ids with your groups and ids.
To directly access all categories:
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/info/infocategories.php?SITE=OZEX&GROUPID=2
To directly access all tours in a category:
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/info/infotours.php?SITE=OZEX&CATID=1
To directly access a specific tour:
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/info/infodetails.php?&SITE=OZEX&strTourCode=BRUCE
BOOKING WIZARD SECTION - The booking wizard is a simple step-by-step booking wizard that enables the agent, operator or passenger to quickly place a booking directly into your database. It utilises realtime availability, realtime credit card authentication and immediate confirmations.
The following link is typical to connect to the above page. Replace OZEX with the name of your SITE.
http://www.yourserver.com/netwizard/v4.1/sections/agent/runStep.php?action=new&strTourCode=BRUCE
Changing the Appearance of the Respax Netwizard
The appearance of Respax Netwizard is completely controlled from within the Terrain. The Terrain is a hierarchical directory structure which allows you to maintain multiple themes for multiple sites. Access to the Terrain directory is normally though a FTP connection facilitated by the website administrator.
It is important to understand how the terrain structure works before you start modifying files within it. Appearance is controlled through a netwizard.css stylesheet and a set of 7 core html templates. You can control which template is being used by placing the css and core templates in certain directories under the Terrain structure.
Style sheet file The netwizard.css controls colours, fonts, borders and table sizing. It is placed within the SITE directory of the Terrain. More on location of css file below.
Images You can add your own images to the Terrain directory structure . They are placed within the SITE directory of the Terrain. More on location of images below.
Core Templates Core templates are re-used on every page. The main core template is tpl.page.html. This page includes all other templates such as tpl.meta.html, tpl.leftbar.html, tpl.rightbar.html, tpl.topbar.html, tpl.bottombar.html, tpl.header.html and tpl.footer.html.
Following shows and example of how the tpl.page.html is built up.
screen shot of agent login screen.
actual break up of html inclusions.
Basic Terrain Directory Structure
When the Respax Netwizard was installed on your machine a GLOBAL directory and SITE specific directory is created under the Terrain directory. The GLOBAL directory contains all the default style sheets, images and templates. It is not recommended that you make any amendments to the global terrain, as when updates are distributed they may overwrite changes that you have made. Instead, it is recommended that you copy templates, images and css file to the SITE specific directory. In our example the site directory is "OZEX".
The SITE specific directory is normally an organisation ID for your organisation. An OZEX directory has been created in our example as the SITE directory. We are going to show a number of scenarios of how to use the SITE directory structure to customise the site.
Scenario 1 - Customise the look of the main templates and add your logo.
Steps:
- Copy the templates from GLOBAL/templates to OZEX/templates,
- Copy the templates from GLOBAL/css/netwizard.css to OZEX/css/netwizard.css and
- Copy your company logo to images.
Open each of the templates to get an understanding of how they are structured. In tpl.header.html, replace the logo.gif file with your image name. Note that the tpl.header.html is using a locate function with only the image name ... without path information.
Scenario 2 - Customise the images used for the header of each agent page
Steps:
- Add the image for agent into OZEX/sections/agent/images
- Move the template from OZEX/templates to OZEX/sections/agent/templates
Note: You do not have to change anything in the tpl.header.html page as it is using the Locate function to find the image.
Scenario 3 - Customise the style sheets for each agent page
This is useful if you want different colours for the specific sections. (Agents, Operator, Booking wiz, Info and Pax)
Steps:
- Copy netwizard.css file from OZEX/css/netwizard.css to OZEX/sections/agent/css/netwizard.css.
Because you copied the file, you can now make changes to the agent specific css file without it affecting all the other sections.
Note: As the page is using the Locate function to find the netwizard.css, you do not have to change anything in the templates.
Terrain priorities
- Following is a example of how the Terrain code is searching for and finding templates. The same principal applies to images and css files using the Locate function.
The terrain searches for files in a predefined order. It first searches the specific SITE Section level, then the specific SITE level, then the GLOBAL Section level and finally the GLOBAL level.
